Technology

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to ban federal departments and agencies from buying or using foreign-made drones, citing a risk to national security, TechCrunch has learned.

The draft order, which was drafted in the past few weeks and seen by TechCrunch, would effectively ban both foreign-made drones or drones made with foreign components out of fear that sensitive data collected during their use could be transferred to adversarial nation-states. The order specifically calls out threats posed by China, a major hub for drone manufacturers that supply both government and consumers, with the prospect that other countries could be added later.

The order says itgovernment policy to &encourage& the use of domestically built drones instead.

If passed, federal agencies would have a month to comply with the order, it said. But the military and the intelligence community would be granted broad exemptions under the draft order seen.

When reached, a spokesperson for the White House did not comment.

Itthe latest move to crack down on Chinese-built technology, amid fears that Beijing is using its authority and influence to compel companies to spy at its behest. Huawei and ZTE among others have faced bans from operating inside the U.S. government, despite protests from the companies, which have long rebutted claims that they pose a risk due to their Chinese connections. Beijing responded in kind by banning from its state offices U.S. and other foreign-made technology.

The U.S. governmentprevalent use of predominantly Chinese-made drones has come under more intense scrutiny in recent months. In January, the Dept. of the Interior issued an order grounding its fleet of close to 800 foreign-made drones, except for in emergencies, amid concerns that any data collected would be &valuable& to U.S. adversaries.

But an email seen by TechCrunch dated July 2019 appears to show internal disagreements about the risks of using foreign-made drones, just months before the grounding order would come into force. Interiorchief information officer William Vajda said in an email to two senior staffers that the departmentdrone program &understands the risks& of foreign-made drones and has &taken appropriate steps to mitigate them.&

&The only more effective mitigation would be to use exclusively U.S. manufactured, non-foreign technologies,& he wrote.

Most of the departmentfleet is built by China-based manufacturers — including DJI — which stands to lose the most if the order is signed. DJI supplies some 70% of the worlddrones in a market said to be worth about $15 billion by the end of the decade.

A spokesperson for the Dept. of the Interior said the department was working to &further assess the risks& of foreign-made drones.

DJI spokesperson Michael Oldenburg said in a statement: &While we haven&t seen the document, this proposal is another attack on drone technology based on its country of origin, which recent reporting has shown has been criticized within federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service and even the White House Office of Management and Budget.&

&When communicating among themselves, these agencies& officials have explained how such an approach damages American interests and does not solve any cybersecurity issues, and have acknowledged that DJIproducts have been validated as secure for use in government operations,& the spokesperson said.

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Amazon has instituted a new policy which will see all Amazon employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine receiving up to two-weeks of pay.

The additional pay is to &ensure employees have the time they need to return to good health without the worry of lost pay,& the company said in a statement.

That pay is in addition to unlimited paid time off for all hourly employees through the end of March, which the company announced as a policy to its workers last week.

The company also said it was setting up a relief fund with a $25 million contribution to support delivery service partners and drivers along with Amazon Flex participants and seasonal employees.

&We will be offering all of these groups the ability to apply for grants approximately equal to up to two weeks of pay if diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine by the government or Amazon,& the company said.

The fund will also support employees and contractors who face financial hardships due to natural disasters, federal emergencies or personal hardship, the company said.

Amazon affiliated workers can apply to receive grant funding ranging from $400 to $5,000 per person.

As a cell phone plan, Yahoo Mobile seems pretty straightforward — therejust one pricing tier, where you pay $39.99 per month for unlimited calls, data and mobile hotspot usage.

But you may be wonderingwhy Yahoo is getting into the phone business. It makes more sense when you recall that Yahoo is owned by Verizon, as part of the Verizon Media business. (Verizon Media also owns TechCrunch.)

Verizon has also spun out a startup called Visible, which also offers unlimited cell services for the same price.

AndYahoo Mobile basically sounds like the Visible service, albeit with the additional feature of a pro Yahoo Mail account. It even offers Visible insurance plans and the same financing through Affirm for people who want to purchase a new Pixel 4, iPhone 11 or iPhone XS. And it includes the same caveats, namely being U.S.-only and coming with the possibility of throttling your data, plus a speed limit of 5 Mbps on the mobile hotspot.

In the official announcement, Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan said:

With the launch of Yahoo Mobile, we are continuing to evolve our business by bringing a new, personalized Yahoo experience to the market that feeds our users& passions, and also attracts new audiences.Combining the strengths of Verizonassets in wireless, technology, and media will enable us to deliver a valuable consumer offering and experiences that give people more of what they want.

Superpeer is giving YouTube creators and other experts a new way to make money.

The startup announced today that it has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Steven Schlafman, Ankur Nagpal, Julia Lipton, Patrick Finnegan, Justin De Guzman, Chris Lu, Paul Yacoubian and Cheryl Sew Hoy. It also launched on ProductHunt.

The idea is that if you&re watching a video to learn how to paint, or how to code, or about whatever the topic might be, therea good chance you have follow-up questions — maybe a lot of them. Ditto if you follow someone on Twitter, or read their blog posts, to learn more about a specific subject.

Now you could try to submit a question or two via tweet or comment section, but you&re probably not going to get any in-depth interaction — and thatif they respond. You could also try to schedule a &Can I pick your brain?&-type coffee meeting, but again, the odds aren&t in your favor, particularly when it comes to picking the brain of someone famous or highly in-demand.

With Superpeer, experts who are interested in sharing their knowledge can do so via remote, one-on-one video calls. They upload an intro video, the times that they want to be available for calls and how much they want to charge for their time. Then Superpeer handles the appointments (integrating directly with the expertcalendar), the calls and the payments, adding a 15% fee on top.

So a YouTube creator could start adding a message at the end of their videos directing fans who want to learn more to their Superpeer page. And if you&re a founder who wants to talk to an experienced designer, executive coach, product manager, marketing/sales expert, VC or other founder, you could start with this list.

Of course, there might be some wariness on both sides, whether you&re an expert who doesn&t want to get stuck on the phone with someone creepy or annoying, or someone who doesn&t want to pay for a call that turns out to be a complete waste of time.

To address this, co-founder and CEO Devrim Yasar (who previously founded collaborative programming startup Koding) said the company has created a user rating system, as well as a way to ask for a refund if you feel that a call violated the terms of service — the calls will be recorded and stored for 48 hours for this purpose.

Superpeer launched in private beta two weeks ago, and Yasar said the startup already has more than 100 Superpeers signed up.

Slack has confirmed that &Slack Calls are experiencing some connectivity difficulties right now.& The company said it is working to resolve the issue &as quickly as possible.& The difficulties coincide with the push from tech companies to move workers to remote-only meetings and conference calls, amid the outbreak of COVID-19.

Slack did not comment on any correlation between the two, or identify what factors are behind the connectivity issues.

In a previous blog post outlining Slackresponse to COVID-19, it said &our system architecture is designed to automatically accommodate the surges of traffic throughout the day that this brings to our systems.& The company said its server capacity can handle the demands, as well as the various regions from which users may be logging in. Slack also outlined how the shift to remote may not add a crazy load to its systems.

&The demands on our infrastructure do not change when employees shift away from working together in the same office; there is no difference in load on our systems whether people are connecting from their office, a cellular network, or their homes.&

It added that employees already use an average of nine hours per day, so the volume remains the same.

Stocks listed on American exchanges today fell sharply, erasing their Tuesday rebound and adding to their Monday declines.

On a day that saw the World Health Organization declare that the spread of COVID-19 has officially become a pandemic, with 4,000 deaths reported from the illness so far, stock markets seemed more affected by the prolonged human and economic toll the virus could take than any stimulus package that could potentially offset its costs.

For the first time in over a decade, bears overran Wall Street with the Dow down more than 20%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), S-P 500 and Nasdaq composite fell 5.6%, 4.9% and 4.7% during the day, respectively. After the daydeclines, the DJIA was off 20.4% from recent highs, while the S-P is off a more modest 19.2%. The Nasdaq is off a similar 19.2%, just missing bear territory. (Previously SaaS stocks entered a bear market after setting records earlier in the year.)

While the Nasdaq is not down as far as the DJIA or S-P 500, some technology stocks suffered sharper declines than the broader market or their larger corporate category. Companies like Uber and Lyft, both recent IPOs that leveraged technology solutions and venture capital to grow, fell 9.4% and 11.8%, respectively. Those declines pushed their equity even further under their IPO prices, undercutting their Q4 narrative of rising chances of profitability ahead of expectations; those wins now feel distant.

Travel hit hard

The ride-hailing companies saw shares fall as the market reacted to their vulnerability to the coronavirus. In an effort to get ahead of the spreading virus, Uber announced Wednesday that it may suspend accounts of drivers and passengers who have been exposed to or contract COVID-19. The company also has said it will work to provide drivers with disinfectants to help keep their vehicles clean.

Those efforts weren&t enough to keep shares out of the red. Uber and Lyft are dependent on drivers and passengers to use the ride-hailing app, as well as their other shared products, like scooters and e-bikes.

Travel-related stocks also got pummeled today, notably Boeing, which announced in a monthly update that companies were canceling the 737 MAX aircraft. Boeing shares fell more than 18% to around $189 after the company reported it had more cancellations than orders in February.

Volatility as the new normal

In recent weeks, the global stock market has shaken, boosting volatility both at home and abroad. Quickly itbecome normal for the DJIA to shift by 1,000 points in a day, and to see huge losses met with next-day gains. This could be read as the market repricing as new information is digested. A less charitable read is that investors are simply unsure of what companies are worth in the face of an uncertain economic future.

The volatility, however, has likely slowed the IPO market, a key liquidity source for private investors and technology companies. A number of private companies that were hoping to make their market debut are likely rethinking their plans, given the state of markets and thereno indication of when things may stabilize.

For now, the new normal has much of the global economy seeing red.